Posts from the ‘Elvis Presley’ Category

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Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. Regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century, he is often referred to as the “King of Rock and Roll”, or simply “the King”.

In the early 80’s RCA records and Felton Jarvis found it necessary to create an album of studio remixes, leaving Elvis’ voice but replacing the original backing tracks with new 1980’s sound. The result of this was Guitar Man, a 10 track LP.

The end result was the ‘Guitar Man’ album released early in 1981. The album was a moderate success reaching number 49 on the album chart. The single ‘Guitar Man’ did better, reaching 28 on the Pop Chart, 16 on the Adult Contemporary Chart, and number 1 on the Country Chart in the US (this turned out to be Elvis’ last appearance in the US Top 40 and his last US number 1 single until 2002 when the ‘A Little Less Conversation’ remix topped the US singles sales chart). The album and the song were also modest hits in the UK. ‘Loving Arms’ was released as the second single from the album and was a Top Ten Country hit.

RCA asked Waylon Jennings to sing along on his finished track. I couldn’t handle that. ‘Call Elvis’, I told them. ‘If it’s okay with Elvis, it’s okay with me’. The Too Much Monkey Business collection released by Follow That Dream Records, includes 10 other Jarvis remixes that were not included on the ‘Guitar Man’ album. It is possible that Jarvis had planned to use them on a second album of remixes. While the remixes are pretty good and most have more punch to them, in general I prefer the originals. It takes a few listens to get used to the differences.
Some of the songs sound like they just wanted to make them sound different and not necessarily better. One of the exceptions is ‘Guitar Man’; the remix sounds much better than the original too me. It features the song’s composer, Jerry Reed on guitar. He played guitar on the original too, only this time he plays an electric guitar instead of acoustic and it sounds great. ‘Burning Love’ rocks (but so did the original) and I also really like ‘I’ll Hold You In My Heart’, ‘Too Much Monkey Business’ and ‘Clean Up Your Own Backyard’.”
Unfortunately Jarvis died just before the album was released and did not see the fruits of his labor.

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Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American musician and actor. Regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century, he is often referred to as “the King of Rock and Roll”, or simply, “the King”.

Moody Blue is the final studio album by Elvis Presley. The album was a mixture of live and studio work, and included the four tracks from Presley’s final studio recording sessions in October 1976 and two tracks left over from the previous Graceland session in February 1976. “Moody Blue” was a previously published hit song recorded at the earlier Graceland session and held over for this album. Also recorded at the February session was “She Thinks I Still Care“. “Way Down” became a hit after Presley’s death less than one month after this album’s publication. Side note…the original album release had the sound of a dog barking after the song Way Down. The apparent joke was that JD Summer hit a note at the end of Way Down that was so low only a dog could hear it. This gem obviously put there by the producer, which was listed as Elvis has since seem to have been taken out of later releases. As described in Elvis: The Illustrated Record, RCA was not able to obtain sufficient new studio material for a complete album, with all but two songs of Presley’s studio recordings of 1976 having already been used in the previous album, From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis, Tennessee or released as singles. The company chose to augment the remaining available works with three live songs recorded in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on April 24 and 26, 1977, which were heavily overdubbed for the album, and were also the final recordings Elvis would ever make. One of those was his version of “Unchained Melody” which he accompanied himself on the piano. RCA and the producer Felton Jarvis had booked a recording studio in Nashville, Tennessee, for January 1977, to record some new tracks for this album. Presley had chosen a few songs to record with the help of Jarvis, most of them were rather country and uptempo. Unfortunately, Presley never showed up at that session, claiming that he was sick and thus staying home (an excuse that Presley used rather frequently during the 1960s to avoid recording poor soundtracks for his motion pictures). Jarvis and RCA had nothing left to do but to fill the album with the live tracks mentioned above. Also included is a live performance of “Let Me Be There” which had already been released three years earlier on his album Elvis: As Recorded Live on Stage in Memphis, even though, as noted, RCA had access to a previously unreleased live recording, “Softly, As I Leave You”, which it would later utilize for a single release of “Unchained Melody”.

The song “Moody Blue” was released as a single in December 1976 and it reached number one on the Billboard Country Singles Chart, and #31 on the pop chart. “Way Down” was released as the album’s next single during the early summer of 1977. It did not go very far up the chart, but it soared to #18 after Presley’s death in August (jumping to number one in the U.K.) It was a bigger hit on the country charts, and it had risen to number one in the same week of the death of Presley. This album reached number three on the Billboard album charts after his death, although it had already entered the top 40 before he died. This was the last album by Presley to reach the TOP 40. Moody Blue was also a number one album on the Country Albums chart. Moody Blue was published on July, 1977, and it peaked on the album chart in August 1977.